If you drew a tree of New Zealand rock, The Clean would in all likelihood be the trunk. Resting on the roots of legendary Kiwi punks Enemy, The Clean debuted in 1978, and were instantly something of an oddity in their homeland, where the rock scene was dominated by bands covering American and British music. The Clean played only their own songs, and helped nurture a Kiwi scene that's accrued probably the best per capita ratio of great bands of any country in the world.
Contrary to popular legend, The Clean's debut single "Tally Ho" wasn't the first release on the Flying Nun label (that honor goes to The Pin Group's "Columbia" single), but it was the release that changed music in New Zealand forever: with next to no resources behind it-- and coming off a recording budget of just $60 NZ-- the song landed in the New Zealand Top 20. By all rights, "Tally Ho" is a classic of immense proportions, from its Velcro melody, absurdly mixed garage organ and motorik beat, to the crusty, hiss-laden home eight-track recording that embodies it.
From these gloriously humble beginnings, The Clean never pursued convention; they didn't even record a full-length until after reuniting in 1989, following a several-year hiatus. Even today, the band is intentionally an on-again/off-again concern for its constituent members Sir David Kilgour, Hamish Kilgour and Robert Scott, who each have numerous, constantly active projects. The Clean's personal, personnel and collaborative connections infest the New Zealand scene, including The Bats, The Great Unwashed, Bailter Space, The Chills, and The Gordons.
For their years without a full-length, the band sprinkled a healthy sampling of EPs and seven-inches across their initial phase, and the first disc of this compilation focuses on that pre-break-up period. Aside from the roots of many a New Zealand band, you can also hear the seeds of Yo La Tengo (who have covered the band countless times, and also guested on their last album, Getaway), and various lo-fi factions of American indie rock. The bulk of their most widely praised release, the generically titled Compilation, is represented here, along with various scatterings from sundry singles, flexi-discs and live EPs, all arranged in something resembling chronological order.
"Thumbs Off" is a brilliant blast of fuzz and amateurish harmony with a strong kinship to the Television Personalities, while "Billy Two" has whiffs of England's Swell Maps about it, and "On Again/Off Again" improbably nods to The Fall with its jumpy acoustic guitar and declamatory vocals; how much contact The Clean had with these bands is hard to say, but those comparisons should read as nothing but compliments. Resemblances aside, Disc One is stuffed with an embarrassment of riches, from organ-marinated pop gems like "Whatever I Do, It's Right" to pre-Clinic instrumentals "At the Bottom" and "Scrap Music", to say nothing of "Point That Thing Somewhere Else", a ragged-edged surf-punk gem containing one of David Kilgour's best guitar parts, a droning whir of delay and fuzz that hangs in the corners of the song like fluttering cobwebs in a breezy room.
The band's early days are left behind for the higher-fi post-reunion output on Disc Two, which features tracks from Vehicle, Modern Rock, and Unknown Country, as well as four incredibly rare songs pulled off of a US-only seven-inch and a flexi included with Modern Rock's early pressings. The band didn't alter their sound so much as expand it in the 90s, deepening the production and, of course, focusing on albums for the first time. While these recordings are generally less revered, there's plenty to rival the immediacy of classics like "The Fish" and "Slug Song": the second disc is just as strong as the first.
The seven tracks from Vehicle sound confident, and show the band coming back together in fine form, with all three members taking vocal turns and pulling in experience from their various other bands. "Drawing to a Hole" kicks things off with a huge wall of jangle and everyman vocals built to infect your brain, and David Kilgour's guitar puts on pounds everywhere, spilling leads and chaotic scrawl all over every song in a joyous celebration of rock and roll noise. "Diamond Shine" is uncharacteristically tight and fast for The Clean, almost foreshadowing Britpop, of all things.
Modern Rock dove back under the fuzz a bit, and feels closer to the band's early material than any of their other latter-day work; the selections from that album are highlighted by the excellent, organ-painted "Secret Place", which features distant-sounding drums and a quivering piano lead that's likely to catch anyone hearing it for the first time well off-guard. By the time Unknown Country dropped in 1996, the band were reaching into new, more East Asian-influenced textures, as evidenced by the drifting "Wipe Me, I'm Lucky", with its backward cymbals and stream-of-consciousness guitar melody.
"Franz Kafka at the Zoo" bobs along on echoing keyboards, sporting whispered vocals and a vaguely ambient aesthetic that immediately sets it off from its counterparts, including the music-box piano sing-along "Clutch", a head-on collision of The Who's Tommy and the Beach Boys in Syd Barrett's brain. Then there's "Balkans", an instrumental that draws on Eastern European dances and harmonies for a satisfying foray into something completely different. "Twist Top" closes the set out with spry rhythms and the rallying cry, "Three million people can be wrong," leaving things in high spirits two hours and 46 songs after the first disc began.
The only release in the Clean canon not represented is 2001's excellent Getaway, which is still widely available for anyone interested. Though not totally comprehensive, at two hours and 46 songs Anthology is hugely inclusive and utterly worth your time, a definitive view of one of the greatest bands of the last two decades, compiling a wealth of their very best material.
